


Until the Sun Goes Down

by nikkiRA



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Gen, Seriously guys I'm not fucking around there are spoilers here, Spoilers, i don't bring him back to life guys i just give him a chance to say goodbye, major disregard for the rules of life and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 11:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14544021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: *Major Spoilers*“Well, I’m honoured. No, really. I’m glad you’re my friend. I’m glad I worked so hard to get you to trust me. I’m glad you broke a three-thousand-year-old rule just to break into Elysium and tell me you want to punch me.”





	Until the Sun Goes Down

**Author's Note:**

> okay this is your last warning that there are spoilers here
> 
> anyway disclaimer that i haven't actually READ the burning maze yet because i'm not......ready........but i know most of the details even if i'm v. vague about in fic
> 
> there's minor solangelo here but it's mostly jasico friendship

When it happens, he and Will are kissing behind the Big House. He feels it like a knife to the stomach. He wrenches away.

“Am I that bad of a kisser?” Will asks, amused, before he catches sight of Nico’s face. “Nico? What’s wrong?”

It’s pain, pain like he’s never felt. Not physical, but emotional. It’s losing Bianca and loving Percy and the suffocating secret he had held inside of himself for so long, all of the worst parts of his life rolled together and tugging at his soul. He knows, he knows, he knows immediately, like a piece of him being ripped away. Is it because he’s a child of Hades? Or just because he had finally opened himself up to be loved?

He falls to his knees, because his legs can’t support him anymore. Percy had told him once what it had felt like to hold the world on his shoulders, the weight and the gravity and the _pain,_ and that’s what he feels now, this massive, unending force pushing him down.

He must be bleeding, somewhere. Somewhere he must be hurt, a physical thing, because this is too much, too much.

“Nico –”

Will crouches beside him, worried boyfriend face replaced by good doctor face. A hand on Nico’s forehead, fingers on his wrist, on his neck, searching for a pulse, hands roaming over his body in a methodical way, looking for something, anything. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said, using the voice he had used on Clarisse that time she had wanted to climb the firewall after being stabbed, the voice he had used when Nico had almost faded away into nothing, the voice he had used that time a couple months ago, when Nico had shown up at the infirmary with a sheepish smile and electricity coursing through him, shocking everything he touched, because they had had a friendly fight, the two of them, to see who was stronger, Nico and –

Nico and –

“Tell me what’s wrong so I know how to fix it.”

_I’m bleeding,_ he wants to shout. _Are you blind? Can’t you see the knife in my chest?_ But he couldn’t remember how to form words, couldn’t make his mouth work, could only think of one of word, and it was no, over and over, _no no no no no no no no no –_

No, hang on, there’s another word, bouncing around in his empty head – _please._

_Please no. Please please please no._

“No physical symptoms that I can see,” Will mutters to himself. “Nico, you need to tell me what’s going on so I can help. What hurts?”

_Everything,_ shouts a voice inside his head. _Everything hurts._

_No._

_Please._

Will drags him up, says they’re going to the infirmary, but Nico yanks himself away and into the shadows, ignoring Will’s panicked calls as he’s swallowed by darkness.

* * *

He ends up right before his father, falling from the shadows on his knees in front of a god as if he were praying. He will, if it helps, he will pray to every god, every deity of every single religion, every day for the rest of his life.

Nico says the only words he knows.

“Please no.”

His father stares at him sadly. “I am sorry, Nico.”

_No no no no no no no no –_

“I don’t understand,” he says hoarsely, more words coming to his mind out of necessity. “It wasn’t like this with Bianca.”

“You did not understand who you were then,” Hades says. “You did not know who you were, or where you came from, or what you could do. You were young and had been young for a very long time. You did not understand yourself.”

Bring him back, then. Wipe his memory. Let him dive into the Lethe, anything that will stop this pain.

“I don’t – I can’t – please,” he says, although he isn’t sure what he is asking for. “There has to be – someway, there was before, he’s come back before –”

“Nico,” his father says, and although his voice is still soothing, there is a reprimand in it as well. “You know how death works.”

“How did it happen?” He asks, because they will want to know, everyone back at camp, he’ll have to tell them, he’ll have to tell Will and Chiron and _Percy,_ Percy will need to know that one of his best friends – and Hazel, and Reyna, they won’t know at Camp Jupiter, he’ll have to do that too, have to bring this down on them, and Thalia, gods, they’d have to find Thalia, have to tell her that she just got him back and now –

His father tells him, in an even voice, and each word is another knife in Nico’s stomach, a blow to his chest, a bruise pressed onto his skin. He is on the ground, still, shaking like a leaf, stomach in knots, fingers opening and closing on the cold ground of his father’s palace as if searching for something to hold onto.

“When will this stop?” His voice is pleading. “Whatever this is, when will it end?”

“It already has,” his father says softly. “Anything you are feeling now is simply the loss of a loved one.”

He cries, finally. He doesn’t try to stop it. He sobs on the ground of his father’s palace, scrabbling at the floor, and a heavy hand lands comfortingly on his head and he sobs and sobs and sobs and sobs and –

* * *

There is immediate commotion when he gets back to camp. He heads to the Big House immediately, a trail of campers following him, waiting to see if he gets in trouble, if Chiron yells at him for leaving, how Will reacts –

Will starts forward, more worried than angry, and Chiron opens his mouth to demand an explanation, but Nico beats him to it.

“Jason Grace is dead.”

The words are ash in his mouth. Silence settles so violently on all of them, as if someone had ripped the sound away. Will’s face crumples, and he steps forward, a hand outstretched, ready to comfort, but Nico steps away and ignores the hurt look on his face because he doesn’t want to be touched, can’t be touched, because one more push and he will break. His body is one big bruise and he is cold and Will is always warm and he doesn’t want to be touched.

“When? How?” Chiron asks, and that breaks the quiet, and people start to move, start to talk. Newer campers ask the older ones who Jason Grace was, some people start crying, others head off in various directions with dazed expressions on their face. Will doesn’t try to touch him again, but he says his name softly, “Nico,” and it’s too much, too much. He remembers his father’s hand on his head, remembers the way Jason hugged him so, so tightly before he left, and the knife in his stomach digs deeper, twists, opens the wound even more.

He falls again. He holds out hope that the ground will open up and swallow him, but it’s just warm hands that catch him instead, and he closes his eyes.

* * *

It had taken weeks of pushing.

The funeral had been – horrible, awful, and he had stood up there and done the rites and his friends were in front of him, Percy holding Annabeth so tightly his knuckles were white, Thalia on Annabeth’s other side, all the colour drained from her face, Leo staring at his hands, fire erupting from his fingers every couple of moments, Hazel crying quietly, Frank holding her hand. Reyna sat in silence, eyes tired, watching him like a hawk, and he wondered, if he faltered, if he fell, if he lost himself, who would get there first, Reyna or Will.

But it was Piper he had stared at, Piper who had shown up with her hair cut off, who hadn’t said a word, who didn’t seem to have any tears left, who stared ahead like she wasn’t seeing anything anymore. Piper who had hugged him when she had arrived, and he shouldn’t have been so surprised at how strong she was, how she gripped his shoulders and held him close. He had never been close to Piper, there wasn’t time, but she must have known, she would feel it too, this knife that still hadn’t left his stomach, and she held him and the knife almost budged, almost came out, almost let the wound close, love and death clutching at each other.

She hadn’t stayed, hadn’t sat around the campfire with everyone else, swapping stories, and neither had Nico. She probably couldn’t bear to hear it – he certainly couldn’t.

Instead he went to the Underworld and asked for the first time. His father had glared at him and yelled, told him he clearly didn’t understand a thing, that there were rules for this reason, and to not ask again.

Nico didn’t listen.

Again and again he badgered his father, just as he had a lifetime ago, begging Hades to join the war again Kronos, but Hades was adamant, for weeks he denied it without even listening, until one time Nico got lucky, and he chose a time when Persephone was visiting.

“I have told you already –”

“And why not?”

It was a question he had asked repeatedly, except this time it’s coming from his stepmother, her arms crossed, staring at Hades with a challenge in her eyes. Hades seems to falter, their usual routine suddenly changed.

“You know as well as I do that there are rules –”

“There are rules because you make the rules, and you have been known to break them in the past. Remember Orpheus and Eurydice?”

Hades whirls on his wife. “Yes, and do you remember how that turned out? It did not _work._ He looked back, because humans always look back. Every single time, they will look back.”

“But you did it.”

“At your insistence.”

“And I am insisting again.”

Nico can’t quite believe that this is happening, that Persephone is fighting this battle for him.

“The rules are there for a reason. I cannot just break them because someone is mourning. Someone is always mourning.”

“They are children,” Persephone says. “Fighting our wars, dying for us, and that is _your_ child, born of death. Let him in, husband, or I will.”

Hades balks. “You do not know how to access Elysium.”

“Three thousand years I have been with you, and you still think I don’t understand the secrets of this place? You still think the Underworld would withhold anything from it’s queen?”

If Nico were in any other state of mind, he would be absolutely blown away at how fucking _awesome_ Persephone is, at the way she stares her father down as if he weren’t one of the elder gods. Hades looks back at Nico and then sighs in defeat.

“You will not mention this to anyone, none of your friends, no stranger on the street, not even your boyfriend. You will keep this secret from everyone and everything until the day you die, and then, since you will undoubtedly continue to skulk around and bother me then, you will continue to never speak of it. One word breathed of this and the punishment will be severe, Nico, whether it pains me or not to inflict it. Do you understand?”

Nico nods silently. He thinks he might be in shock.

“Good. You will have until the sun goes down.”

Nico looks around at their surroundings. “Sun?”

* * *

His father blinds him with darkness and takes his arm, and Nico feels himself dissolving into darkness before coming out again. He feels sun, warmth on his skin, a breeze. For one horrible moment he thinks his father has lied and has brought him back to the surface, but then the darkness is lifted and he sees –

Green everywhere, rolling hills, flowers growing on every surface, and in the distance a city, no, many cities, actually, buildings out of time, Greek temples next to Victorian style houses next to a modern looking condo. Nico turns to his father, squinting unhappily in the sun. Nico could almost smile, if he remembered how.

“The sun does wonders for your skin, Father.”

Hades shoots him a look. “One of these days I am going to smite you,” he mutters, but he doesn’t seem truly mad. “Remember Nico. Until the sun goes down.”

He nods. “Thank you,” he says, because he probably should, but Hades grumbles.

“Your stepmother is a meddlesome woman. This is entirely her doing.”

Nico will have to send her a bouquet, or something. Sure, Persephone could make flowers bloom anywhere she wanted, but it was the thought that counted, probably.

Hades makes one more exasperated sound, looks pointedly at the sun, then at Nico, and then is gone. Nico stares at the place where his father had disappeared and wonders how he’s supposed to track down one hero in a city made entirely for them.

He doesn’t have to. When he turns around, wondering if there’s some kind of directory, Jason is there.

Nico stops. Jason looks good, other than the fact that they’re standing in Elysium. No stab wounds, no scars, no bloodied clothes, just a faded looking Camp Half Blood shirt and a pair of jeans, his hands shoved in his pockets. He smiles sheepishly.

“Hey,” he says, as if they were just meeting on the fucking street, as if they had run into each other at the coffee shop, as if he hadn’t shoved a knife inside of Nico, as if Nico hadn’t been bruised for weeks.

He convinces his feet to move, takes a few steps forward, reaches out. Jason looks completely solid, but when Nico tries to grab his shoulder his fingers pass through him like smoke.

“You’re not solid.”

“Not for the living, I guess.”

“Damn,” Nico says, voice sounding not at all like his. “I was really hoping I would get to punch you.”

Jason smiles sadly. “Come with me,” he says, and Nico has no choice but to listen.

* * *

Nico is numb as Jason leads him through one of the cities. Everything else is solid to Nico’s touch, except the souls there, and he keeps awkwardly walking through people. Someone cusses him out in what sounds like German and Jason can seem to barely hold back a laugh.

“Who the hell was that?” Nico asks as they continue their walk.

“Mozart, I think.”

“Fucking weird.”

Jason finally leads him up a bunch of stairs and onto a roof top, high above the city. He sits at the edge, legs dangling over the side. Nico joins him, looking at the ground beneath him.

“That’s a long way down.”

“Not exactly a threat.” He catches the sight on Nico’s face. “Not because I’m – you know, but because I can fly. Still. I can still fly.”

Nico hits his heels against the building. They sit in silence, and Nico watches the sun, wondering if this was a mistake.

“I’m sorry,” Jason finally says, and that breaks it, finally, and Nico buries his face in his hands, body wracking with sobs. Jason’s hands flit around him, but he can’t touch Nico, so he just sits there miserably and watches Nico break down.

He cries for a while, before finally calming down, lifting his face and wiping his eyes. “I’m so fucking mad at you,” he says weakly.

“I know,” Jason says, but Nico shakes his head.

“No, you don’t – you don’t know, I’m so _fucking mad, Jason,_ but I can’t even really _be_ mad because it’s so fucking like you, stupidly goddamn heroic as always, I fucking hate heroes.”

“Kind of not the best place to say that,” Jason says, but Nico doesn’t care. None of these people can hurt him, not Mozart or Atalanta or whoever fucking else was in this stupid place. The only one who can hurt him is sitting next to him, watching Nico bleed out, unable to do anything to help.

The tears won’t stop falling, although they’re easy to ignore now that they’re not causing his entire body to shake. “This was never supposed to happen. You – you were my best friend.”

Jason wipes his face, too. “I know,” he says again, whispering.

“You were – you were the first person to _see_ me and now you’re –” Nico gestures at him. Gods, he wants to touch him. Nico has never craved touch, not even now, has never been particularly good at affection, but he wants to be able to touch Jason, to grab his arm or his shoulder, bury his head in his chest, because his best friend is sitting here in Elysium and Nico is so tired of being in pain.

“I’m sorry, Nico, I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Nico says. “I know you, you idiot. You wouldn’t change a thing if you could, would you?”

Jason smiles weakly. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I hurt everyone. But I made my choice, and I don’t regret it. I knew it was going to happen, and I wasn’t – I would never have let it be Piper. I wouldn’t have let it be any one of you. I’d die for all of you a thousand times over.”

“We never asked you to.”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s what loving people is.”

He thinks about this. Thinks about Hazel, about Reyna, about stupid, stupid Jason, about Percy and Annabeth and Piper and Frank and maybe even Leo, sometimes. Thinks about Will and that stupid way he looks at Nico that makes Nico feels like the sun is rising inside of his chest. He knows that he would do the same, for them, that life as a demigod meant you could die at any moment, so you’d better make it count. They hadn’t asked for this, none of them had, but Nico would fight until his last breath for all of them.

“Besides,” Jason continues, “I think I’ve escaped death so many times that it was getting kind of unfair. And I think that the reason I kept getting lucky, the reason I was pulled back was because I was always supposed to die here. It was always supposed to be now. And I’m okay with it. Really I am.”

“What if we’re not?”

“I’d rather it be me than any of you.”

“Gods, you’re so infuriatingly noble. I would push you off this fucking building if I could.”

Jason lets out a breathy laugh. “How did you convince your father to let you see me?”

“It was Persephone, actually. She said if he didn’t do it she would.”

Jason nods, and then he says, carefully, “And the others…”

Nico shakes his head. “I shouldn’t even be here, Jason. It took ages to convince my dad, and I don’t even know if he would have allowed it if Persephone hadn’t stepped in. And I can’t tell anyone, either, he made that very clear. Not a single soul. I understand, at least. If word got out that you could visit your loved ones if you pushed enough, that there was a place where they existed after death, mostly solid, imagine how hard people would try to get here. For fuck’s sake, there’s a Starbucks here.”

“Jane Austen runs it. She’s pretty cool, but I told her I loved Pride and Prejudice even though I’ve only ever seen the movie and now every time I get a coffee it feels really awkward.”

Nico isn’t entirely sure how to make sense of that sentence.

“It would be chaos. Think of how many demigods have lost someone. They would swarm down here. It’s a gift, that my father and Persephone gave me this, and I owe them not to tell.”

“You can’t come back, then, I guess.”

Nico stares off into the distance, at the sun still high in the sky. “I have until the sun sets.”

Jason nods, following his gaze. “How is everyone?”

“About how you’d expect.”

Silence settles on them again, but it isn’t entirely uncomfortable.

“Can I ask,” Nico finally says, “Why didn’t you want to try for the Isles of the Blest?”

Jason contemplates this. “It’s a good cause, I guess, and I respect those who do it, but honestly I just – I wanted to rest. And it’s nice here, all things considered, and I wanted to just… stay and wait. Wait for you guys.”

Nico chokes back a sob again. “I hate you so fucking much.”

“Nico –”

“No, you – you told me we were going to do so much, you promised, you told me we’d do karaoke together –”

“Sing along contests,” Jason says quietly. “It was sing along contests.”

Nico takes a steadying breath.

“I’m sorry. Hey, Shakespeare owns a karaoke bar, we could go there if you wanted.”

“I’m 90% sure you’re making this shit up just to fuck with me.”

“No, it’s true, but the songs are all in Iambic Pentameter, it’s kind of a bitch to sing.” Jason laughs, and Nico laughs, too. It feels good, almost normal, laughing with his best friend. Some of the bruises start to fade.

“Just my luck, though,” Nico says. “I finally get a friend and he goes and dies on me.”

“Hey, man, we can still do that stuff. Just dig a pit and pour some blood in like they did in the old days. We can still win at sing-along contests.”

“Don’t need blood, McDonald’s works just fine,” Nico says, twisting his ring around his finger, remembering that awful year of trying to get Bianca to talk to him.

“See? Besides,” Jason says, voice softer now. “I’m not your only friend. Especially not now.”

“No,” Nico agrees. “But you were my best friend.”

Jason looks at him. “Can I ask you to do something for me?”

“You are really not in any position to be asking me for favours.”

“It’s not a big one, I swear. I just – you got to promise you’re not going to get distant from people because of this. That you’re not going to push anyone away because I hurt you. I need to know you’re gonna be okay.”

“Me? Push people away?” But it comes out flat. Nico sighs. “I can’t say I didn’t consider it. Will especially, he’s been so… good, about this, and I just keep thinking about what happened when you died – I felt it, you know, the minute it happened, and it hurt so fucking much. And then I started thinking about Bianca, again, and about how much it hurt, losing her, and how much it hurt losing you, and for a minute I thought it would be so much easier, to just hide away from all of that so it can’t happen again, so I don’t have to feel like that ever again, but I think… I don’t know, it’s stupid, but I think it’s worth it. Even the few months I knew you, I think it’s worth it.”

“Was it only a few months? Really?”

Nico nods. “You’re annoying enough that you managed to worm your way into my life pretty quick.”

“Well, I’m honoured. No, really. I’m glad you’re my friend. I’m glad I worked so hard to get you to trust me. I’m glad you broke a three-thousand-year-old rule just to break into Elysium and tell me you want to punch me.”

“I didn’t break in, my father brought me, thank you very much.”

Jason smiles. They look out at the sky again. The sun is starting to get lower.

“Until the sun goes down, right?”

Nico nods, throat tight. Jason raises his arm and wraps it around him, letting his hand rest gently in the air just above Nico’s shoulder, and Nico shifts slightly, leaning down so his head is right near Jason’s shoulder, almost touching.

“Tell them I love them, yeah? Just say your dad told you, or something.”

Nico nods. “I will.”

“You too, you know. I love you.”

He closes his eyes. He could almost pretend, if it weren’t for the fact that they weren’t touching and Jason wasn’t breathing. “Death turned you into a sap,” he says, and Jason laughs.

“I’m going to assume that means you love me too.”

Nico doesn’t answer, but Jason knows him well enough to understand that words get stuck in Nico’s throat, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel them. He fought his way into Elysium just to say goodbye – of course he loves him.

“Does Shakespeare really run a karaoke bar?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Honestly.”

“What’s he like?”

“Pretty cool, actually. Way more chill than I would have thought.”

“Huh.”

“Do you want to meet him?”

Nico shakes his head. “No,” he says quietly. “I want to just stay up here.”

“Okay,” Jason says. “I’m glad. Wasn’t too eager to share you with Shakespeare when we don’t have much time left.”

The sky is turning a million different shades of orange. Nico stares at the sun, wills it back up higher into the sky, but it doesn’t listen.

“The sun is setting,” he says, tears threatening to start falling again.

He knows he’s just imagining it, because it’s impossible, but it kind of feels like Jason is squeezing him tighter.

“We’ve got time,” he says, and Nico knows that isn’t strictly true, but he closes his eyes again, blocks the countdown out. Focuses on the moment, being here with his best friend.

The bleeding in his stomach has stopped. He thinks the wound might be almost healed. He’ll have a scar for the rest of his life, but it’s fine, it’s fine.

He has time.

**Author's Note:**

> what sarah said by death cab for cutie came on while i was writing this and i started to cry kill me. the title of this doc on my computer is 'totally not canon' lmao
> 
> tumblr @aravenlikeawritingdesk come pretend the last toa book was never published and this never happened


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